That was one weird Penguins-Flyers series. It ended on Sunday, when the Penguins won an 8-5, baseball-score Game 6 that it looked like they’d lose in Philadelphia.
Why these Penguins still own these Flyers
These teams are close, but the Penguins still have Sidney Crosby and high-end forwards the Flyers can’t match.
Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
The Penguins have questions that need answered before they start their Eastern Conference semifinal (likely against the Capitals) next weekend. Evgeni Malkin missed Sunday with an unspecified injury, and the Penguins need him back to go far. They gave up 15 goals in this series despite pitching two shutouts in six games, and they’ll need to find more defensive and goaltending consistency. But for now, they’ll move on with relief.
The Penguins swept these teams’ four-game series in the regular season, but the teams were closer than those results indicated. They were closer together than the Penguins’ 28-15 goal margin in six playoff games suggested, too. But their advantages were real.
Game 6 was a hilarious mess, but the Penguins were slightly less messy.
Both teams had a guy score a hat trick and get five points. Jake Guentzel scored four goals in a row between the end of the second period and the middle of the third to flip a 4-3 deficit into a 7-4 lead, sandwiched around him getting punched in the face by Jakub Voracek. Sean Couturier, who revealed after the game that he was playing with a torn MCL, had three goals and two assists. These were incredible individual efforts, though both players’ scoring outputs were made possible in part by amateur defensive breakdowns.
Try not to laugh out loud at the defense on this Couturier goal ...
... or this Guentzel goal:
Both teams had one defenseman who seemed to be doing everything he could to help the other team win. Radko Gudas was more or less directly responsible for two Penguins goals. The most egregious thing he did was try to stickhandle his way out of trouble before losing the puck to set up Guentzel’s trying goal:
Kris Letang played a disastrous game for Pittsburgh. When the Penguins only led by one in the third, he gave the Flyers a four-on-three power play by losing the puck and then needlessly cross-checking Couturier into the back of the Penguins’ net.
Ultimately, more of the Flyers’ dumb mistakes turned into goals than the Penguins’ did. You won’t see either team’s performance on coaching clinic tapes, but that’s not the point.
The Flyers are gaining on the Penguins, but they can’t catch them yet. The Penguins still have offensive game-breakers the Flyers can’t match.
This season represented an improvement for Philadelphia in the hockey battle for Pennsylvania. The Penguins have badly outclassed the Flyers since 2012, the last time these teams met in the playoffs, when the Flyers won a six-game set in the first round.
A lot has changed since then. Both teams have changed GMs and coaches (twice). The Penguins have won a couple of Stanley Cups, and the Flyers have had a handful of lean years. Both have cycled through good complementary players. The Penguins have found more stability in goal with Matt Murray, and the Flyers are in the net-minding wilderness. The Penguins got Phil Kessel, and the Flyers reloaded with young talent.
But the fundamental thing hasn’t changed. The Penguins still have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and the Flyers still don’t. Those two all-world talents still drive the Penguins when they’re going good, and the Flyers still can’t do anything about them. Many years ago, the Flyers habitually destroyed the Penguins. Here’s what’s changed, in a nutshell:
It’s not just the stars. It was Guentzel who scored four freaking goals in Game 6, when Malkin didn’t even play. But the basis for all the Penguins’ success is still the two centers at the top of the masthead. For his part, Crosby was a dominant force on Sunday. He had a goal and two assists, and the Penguins posted great possession numbers when he was on the ice. When Malkin played in this series, he had five points in five games.
The Penguins’ core isn’t declining much yet. You can’t be on the way down when you’ve won nine consecutive playoff series over three seasons. The day will come at some point when Crosby and Malkin aren’t themselves and the Flyers have a deeper roster and better goaltending. One of the game’s best goalie prospects, Carter Hart, is in their system and not far away from helping the NHL team. But the Flyers, for all the gaining they’ve done, are still a little bit short.
Next, the Penguins get to play another team they’ve owned. That’s probably the Capitals, though there’s a chance it’s the Blue Jackets.
They’ve drubbed both in big moments, most recently playoff wins against them last year. They’ll be favorites in Round 2, even though they’d start on the road against the Capitals. They’ve done that in their previous three meetings in this era and won all three times anyway.
Playoff history doesn’t have to mean anything. Analytically, it shouldn’t. But the Penguins have burned Washington so many times — most recently last spring — that it’s hard not to wonder if they’ve taken up rent-free residence in the Capitals’ heads. Unless the Blue Jackets gets themselves together in a hurry, we’ll get a better sense of that soon.
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